The Dragon Republic

by R. F. Kuang

  “Let me go!”

  “Rin, stop—”

  “I’ll kill him!”

  “No, you won’t,” Kitay snapped. He forced Rin into a kneeling position and twisted her arms painfully behind her back. He pointed at Chaghan. “You—stop talking. Both of you stop this right now. We’re alone in enemy territory. We split up from each other and we’re dead.”

  Rin struggled to break free. “Just let me at him—”

  “Oh, go on, let her try,” Chaghan said. “A Speerly that can’t call fire, I’m terrified.”

  “I can still break your skinny chicken neck,” she said.

  “Stop talking,” Kitay hissed.

  “Why?” Chaghan sneered. “Is she going to cry?”

  “No.” Kitay nodded toward the forest. “Because we’re not alone.”

  Hooded riders emerged from the trees, sitting astride monstrous warhorses much larger than any steed Rin had ever seen. Rin couldn’t identify their uniforms. They were garbed in furs and leathers, not Militia greens, but they didn’t seem like friends, either. The riders aimed their bows toward them, bowstrings stretched so taut that at this distance the arrows wouldn’t just pierce their bodies, they would fly straight through them.

  Rin rose slowly, hand creeping toward her trident. But Chaghan grabbed her wrist.

  “Surrender now,” he hissed.

  “Why?”

  “Just trust me.”

  She jerked her hand out of his grip. “That’s likely.”

  But even as her fingers closed around her weapon, she knew they were trapped. Those longbows were massive—at this distance, there would be no dodging those arrows.

  She heard a rustling noise from upriver. The Hesperians had seen the riders. They were trying to run.

  The riders twisted around and loosed their bowstrings into the forest. Arrows thudded into the snow. Rin saw Augus drop to the ground, his face twisted in pain as he clutched at a feathered shaft sticking out of his left shoulder.

  But the riders hadn’t shot to kill. Most of the arrows were aimed at the dirt around the missionaries’ feet. Only a few of the Hesperians were injured. The rest had collapsed from sheer fright. They huddled together in a clump, arms raised high, arquebuses unfired.

  Two riders dismounted and wrenched the weapons out of the missionaries’ trembling hands. The missionaries put up no resistance.

  Rin’s mind raced as she watched, trying to find a way out. If she and Kitay could just get to the stream, then the current would carry them downriver, hopefully faster than the horses could run, and if she held her breath and ducked deep enough then she’d have some cover from the arrows. But how to get to the water before the riders loosed their bowstrings? Her eyes darted around the clearing—

  Put your hands up.

  No one spoke the order but she heard it—a deep, hoarse command that resonated loudly in her mind.

  A warning shot whistled past her, inches from her temple. She ducked down, grabbed a clump of mud to fling at the riders. If she could distract them, just for a few seconds . . .

  The riders turned their bows back toward her.

  “Stop!” Chaghan ran out in front of the riders, waving his arms over his head.

  A sound like a gong echoed through the clearing, so loud that Rin felt her temples vibrating.

  A flurry of images from someone else’s imagination forced their way into her mind’s eye. She saw herself on her knees, arms up. She saw herself stuck through with arrows, bleeding from a dozen different wounds. She saw a vast and dizzying landscape—a sparse steppe, desert dunes, a thunderous stampede as riders set out on horseback to seek something, destroy something . . .

  Then she saw Chaghan, facing the riders with his fists clenched, felt the sheer intent radiating out from his form—we’re here in peace we’re here in peace I am one of you we’re here in peace—and she realized that this wasn’t just some psychospiritual battle of wills.

  This was a conversation.

  Somehow, the riders could communicate without moving their lips. They conveyed images and fragments of intent without spoken language directly into their receivers’ minds. Rin glanced at Kitay, checking to make sure that she hadn’t gone mad. He was staring at the riders, eyes wide, hands trembling.

  Stop resisting, boomed the first voice.

  Frantic babbles erupted from the bound Hesperians. Augus doubled forward and yelled, clutching his head. He was hearing it, too.

  Whatever Chaghan said in response, it was enough to persuade the riders that they weren’t a threat. Their leader lifted a hand and barked out a command in a language Rin didn’t understand. The riders lowered their bows.

  The leader swung himself off his horse in one fluid motion and strode toward Chaghan.

  “Hello, Bekter,” Chaghan said.

  “Hello, cousin,” Bekter responded. He’d spoken in Nikara; his words came out harsh and twisted. He wrenched sounds out of the air like he was ripping meat from bone, as if he were unused to spoken language.

  “Cousin?” Kitay echoed out loud.

  “We’re not proud of it,” Qara muttered.

  Bekter shot her a quick smile. Whatever passed mentally between them happened too fast for Rin to understand, but she caught the gist of it—something lewd, something violent, horrid, and dripping in contempt.

  “Go fuck yourself,” Qara said.

  Bekter called something to his riders. Two of them jumped to the ground, wrenched Chaghan’s and Qara’s arms behind their backs, and forced them to their knees.

  Rin snatched up her trident, but arrows dotted the ground around her before she could move.

  “You won’t get a third warning,” Bekter said.

  She dropped the trident and placed her hands behind her head. Kitay did the same. The riders tied Rin’s hands together, pulled her to her feet, and dragged her, stumbling miserably, toward Bekter so that the four of them knelt before him in a single line.

  “Where is he?” Bekter asked.

  “You’re going to have to be more specific,” Kitay said.

  “The Wind God. I believe the mortal’s name is Feylen. We are hunting him. Where has he gone?”

  “Downriver, probably,” said Kitay. “If you know how to fly, you might catch up!”

  Bekter ignored him. His eyes roved over Rin’s body, lingering in places that made her flinch. Hazy images came unbidden to her mind, too blurry for her to see more than shattered limbs and flesh on flesh.

  “Is this the Speerly?” he asked.

  “You can’t hurt her,” Chaghan said. “You’re sworn.”

  “Sworn not to hurt you. Not them.”

  “They’re under my charge. This is my territory.”

  Bekter laughed. “You’ve been gone a long time, little cousin. The Naimads are weak. The treaty is shattering. The Sorqan Sira’s decided to come down and clean up your mess.”

  “‘Charge’?” Rin repeated. “‘Treaty’? Who are you people?”

  “They’re watchers,” Qara murmured.

  “Of what?”

  “People like you, little Speerly.” Bekter pulled off his hood.

  Rin flinched back, repulsed.

  His face was covered in mottled burns, ropey and raised, a mountainous terrain of pain running from cheek to cheek. He smiled at her, and the way the scars crinkled around the sides of his mouth was a terrible sight.

  She spat at his feet. “Had a bad encounter with a Speerly, didn’t you?”

  Bekter smiled again. More images invaded her mind. She saw men on fire. She saw blood staining the dirt.

  Bekter leaned in so close that she could feel his breath, hot and rank on her neck. “I survived it. He did not.”

  Before Rin could speak, a hunting horn pierced the air.

  The thunder of hooves followed. Rin craned her neck to look over her shoulder. Another group of riders approached the clearing, this one far larger than Bekter’s contingent. They formed a circle with their horses, surrounding them.

&
nbsp; Their ranks parted. A slight little woman, reaching no higher than Rin’s elbow, moved through the lines.

  She walked the way Chaghan and Qara did. She was delicate, birdlike, as if she were some ethereal creature for whom being anchored to the earth was a mere inconvenience. Her cloud-white hair fell just past her waist, looped in two intricate braids interwoven with what looked like shells and bone.

  Her eyes were the opposite of Chaghan’s—darker than the bottom of a well, and black all the way through.

  “Bow,” Qara muttered. “She is the Sorqan Sira.”

  Rin ducked her head. “Their leader?”

  “Our aunt.”

  The Sorqan Sira clicked her tongue as she strode past Chaghan and Qara, who knelt with their eyes cast down as if in shame. Kitay she ignored completely.

  She stopped in front of Rin. Her bony fingers moved over Rin’s face, gripping at her chin and cheekbones.

  “How curious,” she said. Her Nikara was fluent but oddly syncopated in a way that made her words sound laced with poetry. “She looks like Hanelai.”

  The name meant nothing to Rin, but the riders tensed.

  “Where did they find you?” the Sorqan Sira asked. When Rin didn’t answer, she smacked her cheek lightly. “I am talking to you, girl. Speak.”

  “I don’t know,” Rin said. Her knees throbbed. She wished desperately that they would let her stop kneeling.

  The Sorqan Sira dug her fingernails into Rin’s cheek. “Where did they hide you? Who found you? Who protected you?”

  “I don’t know,” Rin repeated. “Nowhere. No one.”

  “You are lying.”

  “She’s not,” Chaghan said. “She didn’t know what she was until a year ago.”

  The Sorqan Sira gave Rin a long, suspicious look, but released her.

  “Impossible. The Mugenese were supposed to have killed you off, but you Speerlies keep turning up like rats.”

  “Chaghan has always drawn Speerlies like moths to a candle,” Bekter said. “You remember.”

  “Shut up,” Chaghan said hoarsely.

  Bekter smiled widely. “Remember what you wrote in your letters? The Speerly has suffered. The Mugenese were not kind. But he survived, and he is powerful.”

  Was he talking about Altan? Rin fought the urge to vomit.

  “He has his mind for now but he is hurting.” Bekter’s voice took on a high, mocking pitch. “But I can fix him. Give him time. Don’t make me kill him. Please.”

  Chaghan jammed his elbow backward into Bekter’s stomach. In an instant Bekter seized Chaghan’s bound wrists and twisted them so far behind his back that Rin thought surely he’d broken them.

  Chaghan’s mouth opened in a silent scream.

  A sound like a thunderclap ricocheted through Rin’s mind. She saw the riders wince; they’d heard it, too.

  “Enough of this,” said the Sorqan Sira.

  Bekter released Chaghan, whose head lurched forward as if he’d been shot.

  The Sorqan Sira bent down before him and brushed his hair back behind his ears, petting it softly like a mother grooming a misbehaved child.

  “You’ve failed,” she said softly. “Your duty was to observe and cull when necessary. Not to join their petty wars.”

  “We tried to stay neutral,” Chaghan said. “We didn’t intervene, we never—”

  “Don’t lie to me. I know what you’ve done.” The Sorqan Sira stood up. “There will be no more of the Cike. We are putting an end to your mother’s little experiment.”

  “Experiment?” Rin echoed. “What experiment?”

  The Sorqan Sira turned toward her, eyebrows raised. “Precisely what I said. The twins’ mother, Kalagan, thought it would be unjust to deny the Nikara access to the gods. The Cike was Kalagan’s last chance. She has failed. I have decided there will be no more shamans in the Empire.”

  “Oh, you’ve decided?” Rin struggled to stand up straight. She still didn’t fully understand what was happening, but she didn’t need to. The dynamic of this encounter had become abundantly clear. The riders thought her an animal to be put down. They thought they could determine who had access to the Pantheon.

  The sheer arrogance of that made her want to spit.

  The Sorqan Sira looked amused. “Did I upset you?”

  “We don’t need your permission to exist,” she snapped.

  “Yes, you do.” The Sorqan Sira cast her a disdainful smile. “You’re little children, grasping in a void that you don’t understand for toys that don’t belong to you.”

  Rin wanted to slap the contempt off of her face. “The gods don’t belong to you, either.”

  “But we know that. And that is the simple difference. You Nikara are the only people foolish enough to call the gods into this world. We Ketreyids would never dream of the folly your shamans commit.”

  “Then that makes you cowards,” Rin said. “And just because you won’t call them down doesn’t mean that we can’t.”

  The Sorqan Sira threw her head back and began to laugh—a harsh, cackling crow’s laugh. “My word. You sound just like them.”

  “Who?”

  “Has no one ever told you?” The Sorqan Sira grasped Rin’s face in her hands once more. Rin flinched away, but the Sorqan Sira’s fingers tightened around her cheeks. She pressed her face against Rin’s, so close that all Rin could see was those dark, obsidian eyes. “No? Then I’ll show you.”

  Visions pierced Rin’s mind like knives forced into her temples.

  She stood on a desert steppe, in the shadow of dunes stretching out as far as she could see. Sand whipped around her ankles. The wind struck a low and melancholy note.

  She looked down at herself and saw white braids woven with shells and bone. She realized she was in the memory of a much younger Sorqan Sira. To her left she saw a young woman who had to be the twins’ mother, Kalagan—she had the same high cheekbones as Qara, the same shock of white hair as Chaghan.

  Before them stood the Trifecta.

  Rin stared at them in wonder.

  They were so young. They couldn’t have been much older than she was. They could have been fourth-years at Sinegard.

  Su Daji as a girl was already impossibly, bewitchingly beautiful. She emanated sex even when she was standing still. Rin saw it in the way she shifted her hips back and forth, the way she swept her curtain of hair over her shoulders.

  To Daji’s left stood the Dragon Emperor. His face was stunningly, shockingly familiar. Sharp angles, a long straight nose, thick and somber eyebrows. Strikingly handsome, pale and perfectly sculpted in a way that didn’t seem human.

  He had to be from the House of Yin.

  He was a younger, gentler Vaisra. He was Nezha without his scars and Jinzha without his arrogance. His face could not be called kind; it was too severe and aristocratic. But it was an open, honest, and earnest face. A face she immediately trusted, because she couldn’t see a way that this man was capable of any evil.

  She understood now what they meant in the old stories when they said that soldiers defected to him in droves and knelt at his feet. She would have followed him anywhere.

  Then there was Jiang.

  If she had ever doubted that her old master could possibly be the Gatekeeper, there was no mistaking his identity now. His hair, shorn close to his ears, was still the same unnatural white, his face as ageless as it had been when she’d met him.

  But when he spoke, and his face twisted, he became a complete stranger.

  “You don’t want to fight us on this,” he said. “You’re running out of time. I’d clear out while you still can.”

  The Jiang that Rin had known was placid and cheerful, drifting through the world with a kind of detached curiosity. He spoke softly and whimsically, as if he were a curious bystander to his own conversations. But this younger Jiang had a harshness to his face that startled Rin, and every word he spoke dripped with a casual cruelty.

  It’s the fury, she realized. The Jiang she knew was utterly peaceful,
immune to insult. This Jiang was consumed with some kind of poisonous wrath that radiated from within.

  Kalagan’s voice trembled with anger. “Our people have claimed the area north of the Baghra Desert for centuries. Your Horse Warlord has forgotten himself. This is not diplomacy, it is sheer arrogance.”

  “Perhaps,” Jiang said. “You still didn’t have to dismember his son and send the fingers back to the father.”

  “He dared to threaten us,” said Kalagan. “He deserved what he got.”

  Jiang shrugged. “Maybe he did. I never liked that kid. But do you know what our dilemma is, dearest Kalagan? We need the Horse Warlord. We need his troops and his warhorses, and we can’t get those if they’re too busy running around the Baghra Desert fending off your arrows.”

  “Then he should retreat,” said the Sorqan Sira.

  Jiang inspected his fingernails. “Or perhaps we’ll make you retreat. Would it be so hard for you to just go settle somewhere else? Ketreyids are all nomads, aren’t you?”

  Kalagan lifted her spear. “You dare—”

  Jiang wagged a finger. “I wouldn’t.”

  “Do you think this is wise, Ziya?”

  A girl emerged from the ranks of the riders. She bore a remarkable resemblance to Chaghan, but she stood taller, stronger, and her face was flushed with more color.

  “Get back, Tseveri,” said the Sorqan Sira, but Tseveri walked toward Jiang until they were separated by only inches.

  “Why are you doing this?” she asked softly.

  “Politics, really,” Jiang said. “It’s nothing personal.”

  “We taught you everything you know. Three years ago we took pity on you and took you in. We’ve sheltered you, hidden you, healed you, given you secrets no Nikara has ever obtained. Aren’t we family to you?”

  She spoke to Jiang intimately, like a sister. But if Jiang was bothered, he hid it well behind a mask of amused indifference.

  “Would a simple thank-you suffice?” he asked. “Or did you also want a hug?”

  “Be careful who you turn your back on,” warned Tseveri. “You don’t need the Horse Warlord, not truly. You still need us. You need our wisdom. There’s so much you still don’t know—”

  “I doubt it.” Jiang sneered. “I’ve had enough of playing philosopher with a people so timid they shrink from the Pantheon. I need hard power. Military might. The Horse Warlord can give us that. What can you give me? Endless conversations about the cosmos?”